A small green dot lost in the vastness of the southeastern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island has long enchanted archaeologists and the public. Hundreds of giant stone figures, or Moai, that decorate the volcanic island remain a source of fascination.
One of the greatest mysteries about Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, concerns the identity of its earliest inhabitants, the architects of the stoic statues. Did they have genetic ties to natives on the South American land mass thousands of miles away, or were their origins solely in the Pacific islands to the west?

Eurofins Scientific (EUFI.PA), a European leader in Forensic DNA and Toxicology testing in France, Germany and Belgium, announces that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Forensics and Security division of LGC (“LGC Forensics”), the largest player in the UK forensics market, a European pioneer in this field and a significant forensic DNA testing provider in Germany, from LGC Group. The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks, upon fulfillment of customary closing conditions.

Two experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are calling into question a method of presenting evidence in courtrooms, arguing that it risks allowing personal preference to creep into expert testimony and potentially distorts evidence for a jury.

Kuwait has revoked the world’s first law requiring all citizens and visitors to submit samples of their DNA.
Passed in 2015, the law was challenged last year by lawyers in Kuwait. Last week, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that the law violates the constitution’s guarantee of personal liberty.

Septic Tank Sam lies in an unmarked grave in an Edmonton cemetery, his identity no less a mystery than when his tortured body was pulled from a rural septic tank on a spring day in 1977.
But 40 years after Sam met his grisly end, cold case investigators hope a new national DNA database will give fresh leads on who he was — and who killed him.
Set to launch in 2018, the RCMP’s national children and missing persons unidentified remains database will allow investigators to compare DNA from unidentified human remains to DNA from living relatives who offer a sample in hopes of finding answers about a missing loved one.

If your arthritis is bad today or you’re slathering on aloe for an early autumn sunburn, Neanderthals may be partly to blame.
Scientists announced today the second complete, high-quality sequencing of a Neanderthal genome, made using the 52,000-year-old bones of a female found in the Vindija cave in Croatia.
Together with the genomes from another Neanderthal woman and a host of modern humans, a suite of analyses is yielding new clues about how DNA from Neanderthals contributed to our genetic makeup and might still be affecting us today.

WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice today announced awards totaling nearly $37 million to help state, local and tribal government agencies improve the response to sexual assault and victim services, and analyze unsubmitted sexual assault kits in law enforcement custody. The grants will aid jurisdictions in reducing backlogs of sexual assault evidence and solving crimes of sexual violence.
Administered through the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, managed by the Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance, 21 grant awards totaling more than $35 million were awarded to improve the processing of sexual assault kits and strengthen jurisdictions’ capacity to act on evidence resulting from kit processing. Those awards are available online at: https://www.bja.gov/funding/FY-2017-National-Sexual-Assault-Kit-Initiative-Funding-Awards.pdf

(COLUMBUS, Ohio)— Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced that more than 13,000 sexual assault kits have now been analyzed as part of a special Attorney General’s Office initiative to test thousands of previously untested rape kits in the state of Ohio.
Nearly 300 local law enforcement agencies submitted a total of 13,931 sexual assault kits for analysis as part of Attorney General DeWine’s Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Testing Initiative. As of October 1, 2017, 13,145 of the submitted kits – or 94 percent – have been tested by forensic scientists with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI).

SHEBOYGAN COUNTY, Wis. (WBAY) – A circuit court judge has denied Steven Avery’s request for a new trial in the murder of Teresa Halbach.
On Tuesday, Sheboygan County Judge Angela Sutkiewicz issued a decision and order saying, “the defendant has failed to establish any grounds that would trigger the right to a new trial in the interests of justice. As such, no further consideration will be given to this issue.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will undertake a study to assess the reliability of forensic methods for analyzing DNA evidence that, if misapplied, could lead to innocent people being wrongly convicted. The study will focus on DNA mixtures involving three or more people, and on very small quantities of DNA also known as touch DNA.

Human bone fragments found in Aruba that were suspected to be those of Natalee Holloway do not belong to the dead American teenager.
Dr. Jason Kolowski, a forensic scientist leading the testing and interpretation of the results, told Oxygen Monday that tests on the fragments came back negative. The fragments did not belong to Natalee, whose body has never been found.

The deputy director of the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory Bureau has been appointed to lead the agency.
Nicole Roehm, who has been with the state Department of Justice for 10 years, will become the director of the crime lab after former director Jana Champion retired. Roehm has previously worked in the DNA analysis unit as a forensic scientist and supervisor.

The first large-scale study of ancient human DNA from sub-Saharan Africa opens a long-awaited window into the identity of prehistoric populations in the region and how they moved around and replaced one another over the past 8,000 years.
The findings, published Sept. 21 in Cell by an international research team led by Harvard Medical School, answer several longstanding mysteries and uncover surprising details about sub-Saharan African ancestry—including genetic adaptations for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the first glimpses of population distribution before farmers and animal herders swept across the continent about 3,000 years ago.

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